CINCINNATI—The moment it became obvious the Cincinnati basketball program had completed its transformation came not last March when the Bearcats reached the Big East Tournament final and NCAA Sweet 16, and not the previous March when they beat Missouri to advance in the NCAAs for the first time in a half-dozen years. It arrived Tuesday night, not quite six minutes into the second half of a non-league game against the Campbell Fighting Camels.

It was then Bearcats senior center Cheikh Mbodj lost his balance along the baseline and accidentally rolled through a TV cameraman like a Black Friday shopper pursuing a 50-inch flat screen—and star guard Sean Kilpatrick hustled over and helped the cameraman off the floor and onto his stool.

You wouldn’t have seen that in Huggs’ days, would you?

These Bearcats have completed the transformation to lovable, a conversion that hit a speed bump with that fight against Xavier last winter but now has reached fruition. They play oppressive defense, and they won’t back down from a tussle in the lane, but then they fast break and shoot 3s and behave like Boy Scouts.

There’s just one problem with this: So far, they’re getting no love.

The Bearcats have enough poll votes to reach into the Top 25, but that’s not the kind of love we’re talking. Through four games, all against low-major competition, Cincinnati has averaged 5,713 fans in a building that seats 13,176—and used to hit that number as regularly as Taylor Swift hits No. 1.

It’s hard to imagine another ranked team that has played multiple home games and drawn only 43 percent of capacity. But even though that affects the athletic department’s bottom line, those numbers aren’t the real concern for the Bearcats. The concern is they’ll start to play serious teams in the next few months—Alabama on Dec. 1, New Mexico Dec. 27, then the home Big East schedule beginning Jan. 5 against St. John’s—and might still feel a little lonely those nights.

And this matters because a significant part of building a case toward the NCAA Tournament and attempting to contend for a league championship is the advantage a quality team enjoys at home.

“We’ll have a great crowd for Alabama,” coach Mick Cronin told Sporting News. “You know, it’s a pro town. I grew up here. Here, you’ve got to win games. I would say outside of college towns, until you get to January—or you play big-name opponents—this is kind of how it’s going to be. I’m not delusional about how it’s going to be.”

Cronin’s problem isn’t entirely the town, although the Cincinnati Bengals, in a playoff race, had a game blacked out on local television and the Reds, NL Central champs, ranked 16th among 30 baseball teams in average attendance. Right up the street, Xavier, with a smaller fan base and what is expected to be a lesser team, hasn’t drawn fewer than 9,000 fans in its 10,250-seat arena. The problem for Cincinnati is that in Fifth Third Arena, as Cronin puts it, “You don’t have enough quality seats.”

Cronin says the administration is aware of this problem. As well they should be. I had a conversation in my final season covering the team for The Cincinnati Enquirer, 1999-2000, with then-athletic director Bob Goin and asked him when they were going to make the building a better place to watch a game. He acknowledged it had to be done, but the university spent the next several years improving just about every other athletic facility on campus in its Varsity Village project. The one that could have helped draw in more revenue was left alone, with a small number of lower-level chair-back seats, end zone bleachers for the students and upper-deck seats that are too far from the action in the lower rows and reduced to bleacher seating the closer you get to the ceiling. It’s hard to get people to leave HD at home for upper deck in Clifton.

We will know more about the No. 22 Bearcats (4-0) after this weekend, when they compete in the Global Sports Classic in Las Vegas against Iowa State on Friday at 6:30 p.m. ET (CBS College Sports) and Saturday against either UNLV or Oregon. Cincinnati will play two NCAA Tournament-contending squads regardless of how the matchups work out.

The team was built, though, to contend for a Big East championship in much the same way as Pitt chased one down in 2011—with veteran players who have exceptional chemistry, basketball sense, defensive intensity. As that Pitt team had with guard Brad Wanamaker, Cincinnati has a guard in Kilpatrick who’ll have to hustle to have a shot at an NBA roster. As Pitt had in Gary McGhee, Cincinnati’s Mbodj is a defense-oriented center. This team even has better point guard play from Cashmere Wright, who has great hands on defense and is shooting 50 percent on 3-pointers.

Those Panthers managed to record a 15-3 record in a Big East that sent 11 teams to the NCAA Tournament in no small part because of their 8-1 home league mark fueled by ferocious crowds that consistently threatened the Petersen Center’s 12,500-seat capacity.

Last season’s Cincinnati team drew better than 11,000 only once before February. Coaches often wonder if their teams will “buy in,” but that’s not an issue here. After the Bearcats relaxed in the second half of the Campbell game and allowed the Camels to close to a 12-point deficit, JaQuon Parker, the team’s warrior of a small forward, admitted it was “a wake-up call.” Wright admitted, “The intensity level went down. We got comfortable with the lead.” The team closed the evening strong and won by 19.

The student sections have been exceptional, even filling their allotment for exhibitions. So this could be more about whether regular Bearcats fans buy in, and buy seats.

“This is still a great place to play when it’s packed,” Cronin said. “Huge home-court advantage. Rick Pitino said it was the toughest he’s ever seen last year.

“The key is winning games.”

Which comes first, though? The home-court success or the home-court advantage? Honestly, not a lot of quality teams ever have to confront that question.